Cooking Audit

After LPG, they may put a cap on eating now

Greater Kashmir / AJAZ UL HAQUE Publish Date: Nov 11 2012 12:00PM

There is a bad news for those who cook much and worse news for those who eat more. They will have to ration themselves to one dish at a time. Eating more means cooking more and consequently consuming more LPG. Well that will burden the ex-checker. The government doesn't have much to offer, so people will have to exhibit restraint. One cup of tea and one bowl of rice a day. Enough. More means violation. Our hearths will now be audited. Are you ready?There is nothing serious to be discussed in this LPG debate now, so we resort to trifling. Whether the companies will be showing generosity towards us or we will have to be content with what we have, nothing can be predicted. We are witnessing the helplessness (impotence will be an unpleasant substitute) of our ruling class. They can't even provide essentials to their own people. Something we need like we need air for breathing. Our rulers didn't have to demand political rights for us or ask for any path breaking change in the constitution. The bare minimum expected of them was to open newer means so that people don't have to kill each other to fetch a petty LPG cylinder. Seeing long, serpentine queues of men and women pushing each other out of the row seems to be a scene from a 1960s black and white Indian movie. A throwback to horse and buggy age. In this age of communication technology where messages run faster than bullets, where nothing changes hands as transactions occur in millions, where the whole world has squeezed to a table finding denizens sitting across, this dehumanizing habit of getting crunched in a queue is nothing less than a punishment. One wonders as to why cap LPG use? Why make the supply of a cylinder dependent on the registration of a card holder? When we go to refill our vehicle at a petrol pump, do we show the ownership of a car? When we consume provisions, do we need to justify the intake capacity of each member of our family? Our use of clothes, food or other commodities can't be capped as long as we pay for them. If there is a limit to the use of gas, then the next we expect is the cap on our eating capacity. More we eat, more LPG we will require. Who knows legal action may be taken for a new crime of our age – overeating. Hope that doesn't happen too soon, but the way things are going gluttons can be in trouble.